FOREWORD. 



The writer's introduction into poultry-keeping was in the 

 city of Boston, Massachusetts, in the autumn of 1857. By 

 the spring of '68 I had a flock of nearly 400 birds, among them 

 a lot of the best Single Comb White Leghorns that I could 

 find. I went in person to New York city to get them. My 

 friends thought such extensive poultry-keeping the limit of 

 folly, and freely remarked that I was going crazy. In those 

 days eggs were almost worthless during the spring and sum- 

 mer months, but would often sell for fifty cents per dozen 

 in the winter. This set me to thinking that perhaps it 

 might be possible to increase the egg-yield in the winter and 

 by so doing make the fad a better paying proposition. 

 Through my experiments I found that all hens were not alike ; 

 that some would be very good table fowl and poor layers, 

 others would be very good layers and poor table fowl, while 

 still other hens would be very fair table fowl and very fair 

 layers. At this time we had all the old-fashioned breeds 

 we could get, and discarded them all for the Single Comb 

 White and Brown Leghorns. I had decided that knowl- 

 edge was of commercial value only when applied, and having 

 a working knowledge of the anatomy and physiology of the 

 hen, I decided to try to turn the same to a commercial ac- 

 count, and in a couple of years had evolved what is now known 

 as the "Walter Hogan System," which consists in ascertain- 

 ing the value of a hen for the purpose you desire by the 

 relative thickness of and distance apart of the pelvic bones. 

 Before 1873 I had communicated this discovery to some of 

 my friends under promise of secrecy. One of them, Albert 

 Brown, once a well-known banker, of Amesbury, Massachu- 

 setts, and O. H. Farrar, of the same place, an overseer in 

 the Hamilton Mills, and a light Brahma specialist. After 

 using the above so-called "system" for a number of years, 

 I developed a new method, which I have taught in part pri- 

 vately for some years, and which I now introduce to the public 

 under the title of "The Call of the Hen; or, The Science 

 of Selecting and Breeding Poultry." 



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